A Points South essay from the North Carolina Music Issue. Shortly after publishing the biography John Coltrane: His Life and Music, Lewis Porter received a letter from a man who identified himself as a Coltrane. Only not, presumably, one related…by
Benjamin Hedin |
Nov, 2018

A poem from the North Carolina Music Issue. When it snows, the entire post shuts down like there is no war going on. Perhaps the higher-ups decide to let those left behind, for the moment, savor the chance to shape snowmen with their children or lie…by
Zachary Lunn |
Nov, 2018

A feature essay from the North Carolina Music Issue. Rapsody now dons the mantle for a long tradition of black women, particularly those from the South, forcing Americans to look in the mirror of our professed ideals and to face…by
L. Lamar Wilson |
Nov, 2018

A Points South essay from our North Carolina Music Issue. After twenty-four years of educational experimentation and financial struggle, Black Mountain College closed in 1956. Today it is remembered primarily for its tremendous impact on the visual arts. Among the…by
John Thomason |
Nov, 2018

A Points South essay from the North Carolina Music Issue. Even with all the influences on his style and songs—Fred Miller, Blind Boy Fuller, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGhee, to name some—Henry had a large…by
Tom Rankin |
Nov, 2018

A Points South essay from the North Carolina Music issue. My hometown is just over an hour from Myrtle Beach, and so it was not unusual for people to make the pilgrimage to the Pad or the Spanish Galleon or…by
Jill McCorkle |
Nov, 2018

Track 20 – “Mill Mother’s Lament” by Ella May Wiggins; Performed by Shannon Whitworth Ella had grown up in the Smoky Mountains, first on farms and then in lumber camps, where she and her mother took in laundry while singing…by
Wiley Cash |
Nov, 2018

Notes on the songs from our 20th Southern Music Issue Sampler featuring North Carolina. The profiles, eulogies, and essays herein boast of remarkable achievements of North Carolina’s musicians across eras and genres: from unassailable legends (High Point’s John Coltrane, Tryon’s…by
Oxford American |
Nov, 2018

As for the movie I’m watching, I came to adore it more than I ever expected to. It sent me down a Lou Reed rabbit hole. Transformer and Mick Ronson led to Bolan and Mott and then to glam writ large. For a theater kid with a nascent interest in songwriting, the serotonin fireworks are nearly impossible to describe.

In a 2017 interview with Bill Flanagan, Bob Dylan held forth on his views regarding Don McLean’s “American Pie,” a song that I have loathed with an almost inchoate malice since first encountering it as a young child. Dylan didn’t seem like a fan either, and in particular addressed the long-standing conjecture that he himself was the so-called “jester” referred to in McLean’s bloviating marathon.